WHITE AND YELLOW
San Francisco Bay is so large that often its storms are more disastrous
to ocean-going craft than is the ocean itself in its violent moments. The
waters of the bay contain all manner of fish, wherefore its surface is
ploughed by the keels of all manner of fishing boats manned by all manner
of fishermen. To protect the fish from this motley floating population
many wise laws have been passed, and there is a fish patrol to see that
these laws are enforced. Exciting times are the lot of the fish patrol: in
its history more than one dead patrolman has marked defeat, and more
often dead fishermen across their illegal nets have marked success.
Wildest among the fisher-folk may be accounted the Chinese shrimpcatchers.
It is the habit of the shrimp to crawl along the bottom in vast
armies till it reaches fresh water, when it turns about and crawls back
again to the salt. And where the tide ebbs and flows, the Chinese sink
great bag-nets to the bottom, with gaping mouths, into which the shrimp
crawls and from which it is transferred to the boiling-pot. This in itself
would not be bad, were it not for the small mesh of the nets, so small that
the tiniest fishes, little new-hatched things not a quarter of an inch long,
cannot pass through. The beautiful beaches of Points Pedro and Pablo,
where are the shrimp-catchers\' villages, are made fearful by the stench
from myriads of decaying fish, and against this wasteful destruction it has
ever been the duty of the fish patrol to act.
When I was a youngster of sixteen, a good sloop-sailor and all- round
bay-waterman, my sloop, the Reindeer, was chartered by the Fish
Commission, and I became for the time being a deputy patrolman. After
a deal of work among the Greek fishermen of the Upper Bay and rivers,
where knives flashed at the beginning of trouble and men permitted
themselves to be made prisoners only after a revolver was thrust in their
faces, we hailed with delight an expedition to the Lower Bay against the
Chinese shrimp-catchers.